Planned Parenthood v Komen

The political valence of controversy

I SEE that Karen Handel, the pro-life vice-president of the Susan G. Komen Foundation widely believed to have played a leading role in its short-lived decision to cut off grants to Planned Parenthood, has resigned. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Jim Galloway reprints her letter of resignation. Here's an excerpt I found worthy of note.

I openly acknowledge my role in the matter and continue to believe our decision was the best one for Komen's future and the women we serve. However, the decision to update our granting model was made before I joined Komen, and the controversy related to Planned Parenthood has long been a concern to the organization. Neither the decision nor the changes themselves were based on anyone's political beliefs or ideology. Rather, both were based on Komen's mission and how to better serve women, as well as a realization of the need to distance Komen from controversy. I believe that Komen, like any other nonprofit organization, has the right and the responsibility to set criteria and highest standards for how and to whom it grants.

Let's get this straight: Ms Handel defends the decision to cut off funding to Planned Parenthood as part of an effort "to distance Komen from controversy."

If this was in fact the strategic concern, then clearly the decision was spectacularly inept. Worse yet, Ms Handel appears genuinely deaf to the irony that as a result of the cut-off, the Susan G. Komen Foundation is now itself precisely the sort of "controversial" organisation that other donors will refuse to work with—perhaps not due to "anyone's political beliefs or ideology", but simply because, well, you know, we can't afford to be associated with that type of...controversy.

This, obviously, is part of an ancient political dance. First you get politicians and ideologues to throw some mud. Then you come to the neutral civil-society groups and pressure them to drop their ties or be accused of taking sides. "It's not that we have anything against you, per se; we just can't be associated with something so controversial." I can plug this into a civil-rights context, a McCarthyite context, and so forth. I'm trying to think of a context where it's not reprehensible, but none come to mind.

Shorter whoever wrote that first thing: The media forced millions of Americans to stop giving money to the Komen foundation as part of its nefarious plot to...{...?...]...

Shorter George Will: It is wrong to defend the legality of abortion because it shows you don't care enough about the environment, poverty and ending wars. That those of us who do not care about the environment or poverty and support starting wars seem to care so much about other people's blastocytes and fetuses is in no way odd.

Rather, the Economist (or at least MS) is saying that, if Ms Handel's version is correct, the action takes was spectacularly counter-productive. That is, that the action had results exactly opposite to what Ms Handel (not necessarily the Komen Foundation) says was the intent.

First is Douthat. A nefarious plot? Just a bias that tends to portray pro-lifers as anti-women despite the fact that half of all women are pro-life. A bias that portrays Planned Parenthood as apolitical when they actively oppose even the most modest abortion restrictions that enjoy overwhelming public support. A bias that portrays Planned Parenthood as mammogram providers when in fact they don't provide mammograms but do perform over 300,000 abortions a year. A bias that reports that abortions account for only 3% of visits (technically true but misleading since many more visits are for consultations that will end in abortion on subsequent visits) but doesn't report that 30-40% of PP's revenue comes from abortions.

As for the Will quote, it's one thing to defend the legality of abortion, but of all the issues that galvanize, the enthusiasm for abortion rights is bizarre to say the least if you take a step back from it all.

"...the Susan G. Komen Foundation is now itself precisely the sort of "controversial" organisation that other donors will refuse to work with"
- implies sgkf will be affected because of its actions, which were in fact perpetrated by an individual.

Your comment is a more dishonest representation of the situation than the post. The issue was never about whether abortion is controversial or the pro-life movement despicable, the issue was about whether a Congressional inquiry with no basis behind it justifies defunding an organization that you had supported for years under the rationale that *the organization* has suddenly become controversial.

What M.S. has specifically called despicable is the act of manufacturing controversy where none existed and without any basis behind it and then using the presence of that newly existing fake controversy to smear the accused and drive people away from them.

I am not sure that being pro-life means being anti-abortion *in absolute terms*. Likewise, I am not sure that being pro-choice means being enthusiastic about abortion *in absolute terms*.

Check that - I am pretty sure that it is not the case at all, actually. The range of individual cases considered makes it virtually impossible to have a definite, one-size-fits-all position, let alone a consensual nationwide policy about abortion.

I am positive that you will find millions of self-described "pro-life" people who would have serious (and justified) misgivings about a situation where a pregnancy might kill the mother. In parallel, I do not doubt that there are millions of self-described "pro-choice" people who would be rightly revulsed by the (ab)use of abortion after two emancipated, intelligent adults preferred not to use a condom during a one-night stand.

I actually know quite a few people who could fit just as easily in both categories, starting with yours truly.

What this debate has managed to do is to polarise the political spectrum even more (quite an accomplishment in itself considering the present sorry state of public discourse) and to undermine the remnants of nuance, balance, shades of grey and acceptance of deeply personal (and, over time, evolving) views about a remarkably complex topic.

Step back and think about it. The right said, "if you're going to support access to abortions we're not going to help you with breast cancer."

It's ridiculous. But that's a big point of this article. Now there is controversy where none existed before about issues that are only tangentially related (Women's health). Now each side gets to point at the other and say how ridiculous the other is being for bringing politics into it.

I was just pleased to see how quickly Planned Parenthood reaped the rewards of Komen's stupidity. I know several people who were inspired to set up recurring monthly donations to PP when this all came to light.

There was already enough controversy about Komen's pink-washing - not to mention how donations were actually being used - I have a feeling this particular mess is going to make it very hard for them to recover.

Here in Dallas, I frequently drive by an outfit with a hard-to-see, nondescript hand-stenciled sign out front, "Northpark Medical Group." It struck me as odd that a doctor's office had such a small, unprofessional sign, until one day I drove by and saw a bunch of protesters out front. Turns out that the NMG does abortions, and on the days it actually does them, people line up out front trying to discourage the women from going through with it.

Part of me was sympathetic to the protesters - this is clearly a matter of conscience to them, and I have to admire them for getting off their butts to do try to stop something they think is evil. But part of me was sympathetic to the women going into the clinic. I imagine that for many this was a very difficult decision, and that for every ten or so passing through the door, there were no doubt a few with heartwrenching stories about how they wound up needing the clinic's services.

Although abortion is legal, it's very hard to get one in Dallas, particularly if you're poor or low-income. Only a few doctors do abortions, and they are hassled in public - I found out that a member of our church performed abortions when we left church and had to pass through a gantlet of protesters calling out the doctor as a "baby-killer." I admired the doctor for the courage of his convictions, and for his grace in the face of the protesters.

If supporters of Planned Parenthood "bullied" SGKF with a bloodless, confrontation-less and civil two-day PR campaign, then there is no word in the English language for what right-to-lifers do to women seeking abortions and doctors who perform them.

@ RR: "As for the Will quote, it's one thing to defend the legality of abortion, but of all the issues that galvanize, the enthusiasm for abortion rights is bizarre to say the least if you take a step back from it all."

Yeah, what could possibly be more bizarre than people getting worked up when others threaten to take their rights away? Especially when the right concerns something completely trivial like one's ability to control what happens to one's own body.

If late-term fetuses could vote and talk and demonstrate, we would be seeing a second Civil Rights movement. It's rather unnerving that some people would support abortion under any circumstances - not that the American doctors have been indulging in such a practice.

The Media’s Abortion Blinders"Conservative complaints about media bias are sometimes overdrawn. But on the abortion issue, the press’s prejudices are often absolute, its biases blatant and its blinders impenetrable. In many newsrooms and television studios across the country, Planned Parenthood is regarded as the equivalent of, well, the Komen foundation: an apolitical, high-minded and humanitarian institution whose work no rational person — and certainly no self-respecting woman — could possibly question or oppose. But of course millions of Americans — including, yes, millions of American women — do oppose Planned Parenthood."George Will:"The American left cares about ending wars and they care about poverty and they care about the environment, but they really care about — when they’re not perfunctory — is when you touch abortions. And historians will marvel that American liberalism in the first part of the 21st century is defined as defense of abortion."

Isn't it amazing the conversatives rail against Europe and the middle-East in the same breath, while embracing social policies embraced in the Muslim middle-east that held back millions of their citizens while denouncing the "socialist" European policies that uplifted millions of their citizens?

You may like to call it Judeo-Christian, but there is no such thing. It is Abrahamic or bust. Islam has as much in common with Christianity as Judaism has in common with Christianity. Socially, legally, and theologically.